Merle Haggard‘s early years, marked by minor crimes such as truancy, theft, shoplifting, and petty larceny, are well-documented. But in the early ’80s, he became a victim of a not-so-petty crime. On ...

The best part of Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum right now is probably an exhibit dedicated to the Bakersfield Sound, looking back on when artists like Merle Haggard and Buck Owens ...

Merles brother, Lowell, and his sister, Lillian, were teenagers when his mother, Flossie, found out she was pregnant with Merle. "She sort of was embarrassed about it", Haggard says. "The children ...

Ben Haggard, then 15, was terrified. PHOTOS:Merle Haggard through the years This was six years ago, and Haggard had just begun playing lead guitar for his famous father, a Country Music Hall of Famer ...

A chart-topping country song told the touching story of a family whose determination helped them overcome extraordinary challenges.

Merle Haggard is dead at 79, and that seems impossible. The performer—an American poet, ambivalent culture warrior, reformed criminal, and all-around good-time character who changed country music by ...

The lines in his face look like a road map to hard times. The lines in his songs speak of hard times for common folks like him. I made those observations talking to Merle Haggard back when he was only ...